HELLO,
BLACK
WORLD.

INTRODUCTION.

The 1900 Paris Exposition hosted countries from around the world to reflect on their individual achievements and ambitions for the new century. These primarily Western nations created elaborate displays to showcase their past and present technological and cultural prowess in contrast with exhibits of literal human zoos of "primitive people" from different regions of Africa and Latin America. This colonialist agenda led Thomas Junius Calloway to successfully appeal to the U.S. government to allow Black Americans to create their own counteractive exhibit that would be viewed by millions at the upcoming world's fair. With such a monumentally important task, Calloway, a Black lawyer and educator, enlisted the help of his former Fisk University classmate, W.E.B. Du Bois. The desires of Calloway and Du Bois perfectly meshed in the Du Bois-led Atlanta University team's creation of various charts and diagrams that were equally informationally rich as they were visually arresting. The Exposition des Negres d'Amérique astounded viewers of all races and went on to receive much critical acclaim. Their success proved without a shadow of a doubt that Black progress was a product of our own self-determination in spite of the constant onslaught of systematic racism.

Today, we stand 123 years from this triumphant display, twenty-three years from the start of a new millennium, and three years from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the police executions of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. At this important juncture, Hello, Black World: Du Bois, Data, and the Black Experience walks in Du Bois' footsteps to methodically consider how we have waxed and waned in our progression. Du Bois clearly understood that simply collecting the data was not enough; rather, it needed to be presented in a way that was accessible and engaging for the everyday person. Hello, Black World pushes Du Bois' model further by incorporating 3D visuals, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). The collaborative project was spearheaded by Dr. Amy Yeboah Quarkume of Howard University and Dr. Bryan Carter of the University of Arizona and developed by Arjun Phull, Anuj Gupta, and Duo Bao of the University of Arizona. Hello, Black World utilizes technology to harness the power of our ever-present smartphones and enhance the physical surroundings with layered virtual visuals. With visual effects, VR, and AR, this new exhibit allows viewers to easily compare the statistical 2D graphs of Du Bois' time with present information in 3D.

Apart from Du Bois' path breaking work, there are several other sources from contemporary scholarship in digital rhetoric, technical communication, and Africana studies that have inspired our work. First, through Beveridge's (2017) recommendation for teachers to make data-driven arguments more accessible and meaningful to their students through data visualizations, the data visualizations in our initial exhibition and now in this webtext, seek to encourage students and teachers to explore the world around them using the power of data-driven storytelling. Additionally, our work also responds to Melonçon and Warner's (2017) advice for future technical-professional communication scholars to pay attention to the affordances provided by innovative, interactive visualizations as they can enhance the work of science communication. Through the Hello, Black World exhibition, we've tried to make a kind of science—data science—more accessible to the public at Howard University by communicating its impact and purpose in an engaging and accessible way using interactive data visualizations. Finally, one of our major sources of inspiration is also Washington et al.'s (2021) advocacy in favor of integrating the rich legacy of HBCU culture into computing education, specifically teaching elementary data structures. By incorporating unique cultural perspectives, such as historical context and experiences, they argue that educators can enhance student engagement and understanding of fundamental data structures in the computing field. A similar approach was forged with the Hello, Black World exhibit, bridging cultural relevance with technical education, providing a novel approach to enriching the learning experience for potential data science students.